Newest Literature Essays

Throughout Savage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward places considerable emphasis on growth and change within Esch -- whether the multiple descriptions of Esch’s pregnant belly, or how she sees herself as a fighter who breaks the stereotypical male-female...

“Who is to say who is the villain and who is the hero? Probably the dictionary.” - Joss Whedon

Although the line between what makes a hero can become blurred, the basic traits of a hero remain the same for the most part, as proposed by Joseph...

In his novel Franny and Zooey, Salinger effectively portrays the troubled lifestyles of the Glass family, particularly those of Franny and Zooey, the two youngest Glass children. These two characters were raised with an education that promoted...

The concept of an `unspoken’ boundary is one drenched in ambiguity, with any clear sense of its nature, function and effect seeming initially obscure. However, these unnoticeable boundaries still exert a strong restrictive grip on both protagonist...

At first glance and introduction, it seems Mr. Doolittle is no more than a slovenly and crude navvyman. He serves the plot as nothing more than a physical representation of where Eliza comes from. However, in the two scenes he is in, he steals the...

In ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ Enobarbus is a trusted follower and close friend of Antony’s, who has the freedom of speaking openly about personal issues that Antony confides in him about. Although he has limited influence over Antony when compared...

Magical realism is a truly transformative genre of fiction in which fantastical or mythical elements are blended with realistic ones in order to reveal something about human nature or existence. There have been many writers over the years who have...

“Our society needs more heroes who are scientists, researchers, and engineers. We need to celebrate and reward the people who cure diseases, expand our understanding of humanity, and work to improve people’s lives." - Mark Zuckerberg

People need...

As the account of his life goes, Edgar Allan Poe was a notoriously dark and depressed man who was always in search of love. When he finally found a marital relationship with his first cousin, she passed away, making his life even more tragic and...

Since its first publication in 1995, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien is, arguably, the greatest epic fantasy to ever be written. Encapsulating the classic theme of “good against evil,” along with its various subplots and well-developed...

On the surface, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment" is a story about several troubled adults who are given the chance to go back to their youths and enjoy their former, more beautiful selves. The idea of youth in this story,...

Both John Keats's 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' and Christina Rossetti's 'In An Artist's Studio' both tackle similar themes; adoration for art be it one's own in Rossetti's poem, or the art of another in Keats's, with Keats admiring the...

We can’t know how another person feels. Perhaps, in an age of “empathy workshops,” this is a disappointment, but on a deeper level of human behavior it is probably both simultaneously a relief and a tragedy. "Thank heavens," some may say, "that we...

The idea of rebirth and newness are a critically important theme of the novel 'Room' and a principal factor of the story itself. The novel is all about newness, since for Jack, having lived his whole five years of life inside Room, the act of...

“Racism is not about how you look, it’s about how people assign meaning to how you look.” (Robin Kelley, an American History Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles)

People tend to judge each other based on social constructions...

History, as humankind knows it, encompasses a body of words, and accompanied with these textual artifacts are the ideals, thoughts, and morals of a particular society. Culture, shaped by the thoughts of our predecessors and expanders, can be...

Educational practices have evolved in a multitude of ways throughout human history. In Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, each land that Gulliver visits has its own idea of what education should be like for the citizens there. The first land...

“These are the myths I tell about my family and, like all myths, they are both truths and lies, simultaneous buffers of love and betrayals of trust.” (Hsu-Ming Teo 1)

Love and Vertigo is a contemporary autobiographical novel that maps the lineage...

In David Guterson’s award-winning 1994 novel Snow Falling on Cedars, the story centers around the murder trial of Kabuo Miyamoto, using the testimony as a vehicle to tell a multigenerational story about the island’s fraught history from the...

“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.” - Albert Einstein

Distinguishing...

Once, in a physical science class, my professor showed the students a picture diagram of the three-pronged iceberg that sank the Titanic. A peer of mine immediately said, “How did that small iceberg sink a huge ship?” My professor let the class...

Imagine if all those fortune tellers and palm readers are right and their “predictions” hold meaning. Think of how much that would change our world today. Everyone would be given an opportunity to change the negative aspects of their futures....

There’s a plethora of adjectives one could apply to the survivors of Hitler’s nightmarish concentration camps during the later years of the second world war; lucky, miraculous, strong-willed, and many more. However, what one must begin to...

Humankind has been unravelling the secrets of the universe for millennia, discovering more about the world in the process; but will we ever reach a point where we know too much? That is indeed the premise of Shelley’s “The Modern Prometheus”; a...